Bio

Frits Klein was born in 1898 in Java, into a well-to-do family.  He was sent back to Holland for his schooling, and it was there he came into contact with the art-minded Wegerif family.  Frits knew that he wanted to be an artist, and in 1920 left for Paris - setting himself up there in a house of the Rue de depart, where Mondrian also had a studio. But in 1926, along with a group of other Amsterdam artistic types, he moved south to Cagnes, near to Nice.   Frits became known as a "sunny" and decorative painter.  He used much colour in his work.  Circus horses were his favourite subject - also clowns and beach and street scenes.  

In 1928 he and Marie Raymond had a son, Yves. Always interested in materials, Frits often mixed his own paints.  One day, with the front door and window frames of their home needing re-painting, he mixed a particular shade of blue.  Years later his Yves would use that at his inspiration for his monochrome paintings and sculptures in so-called "International Klein Blue".  Frits Klein reportedly said of the legendary avante-gardist, "had he not been my son, I would have simply found it all a huge joke, but he was my son, and so I tried to understand his work.  I am still not there".  Yves died young in 1963. 

On Frits' 80^th birthday he was honoured with a major retrospective at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and on his 90^th a second retrospective at the Pulchri in the Hague.  Klein died in 1990.